The goal of Vegetable Soup, a television series for children, is to help counter the negative, destructive effects of racial prejudice and racial isolation and to reinforce and dramatize the positive, life enhancing value of human diversity in entertaining and affective presentations that children can understand and relate to. This teaching guide provides teachers with a description of the contents of various segments of the show and indicates the relationship of these segments to the overall theme of the show. Each segment is composed of three parts. The purpose of each segment is given to state the intent as perceived by the series designers and television writers, the synopsis is a brief overview of each segment containing details of the major events of each episode within the segment and the names of the main characters, and the ideas for discussion following each segment contains questions designed with the hope of promoting classroom discussion and thinking. Among the segments presented are the following: outerscope, real people, make a new friend, people's jobs, heroes, the superlative horse, story telling time, children's poetry and art, holidays, children's questions and activities. Vegetable Soup uses an interdisciplinary approach to entertain and educate elementary age children in the value of human diversity. The show offers teachers a unique opportunity to further develop children's skills in the areas of language arts, social studies, and career education. (Author/AM)
